Why Do Gaming Laptop Batteries Drain Fast?
Gaming laptops are an excellent option for anyone who needs the portability of regular laptops but also wants to play games on them regularly. Still, gaming laptops have some disadvantages, mainly less powerful batteries. There are many reasons why gaming laptop batteries drain so fast, for instance:
- Playing high hardware demanding games
- Corrupted firmware
- Many processes run in the background
- Brightness setting of the display is too high
- Battery runs too hot
- Wrong system settings
If you buy a new or used gaming laptop, remember that the battery does not last over 2-3 hours when running games in most cases. More expensive gaming laptop batteries also drain quickly if a hardware-demanding game is running.
How To Fix A Laptop Batteries That Dies Fast
If your laptop’s battery drains quite quickly when playing games or just browsing the web and watching videos, there are a few steps you can take to increase the battery’s lifespan, such as:
- Change Brightness Settings: The higher your brightness setting for the monitor, the more energy will be consumed per minute. Reducing the brightness a bit can save a few percentages on the battery every hour.
- Keep The Battery Cool: While playing games or doing other heavy tasks on your laptop, the entire system heats up, including the battery. The hotter the battery becomes, it’s efficiency will drop.
- Change The Systems Settings: Changing your laptop’s performance settings is one of the easiest ways to reduce energy consumption. Windows provides three energy plans: balanced, power-saving, and performance.
- Close Background Processes: Closing an application by clicking the X doesn’t shut it down in most cases. By opening the Task Manager and shutting down unused programs can reduce energy consumption.
- Keep The System Up-To-Date: Installing the latest updates can optimize energy consumption, but results are small most of the time. Combining this step with others is recommended.
- Optimize Game Settings: If you play hardware demanding games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty, or Battlefield, reducing the graphic settings can reduce energy consumption a lot. On lower settings, it’s possible to double the time you can play compared to high settings.
- Eject Inserted Discs: Running disc drives can be a reason for increased power consumption, especially if you transfer a lot of data. Removing the disc drive by pressing the eject button on the side can save you a few percentages on the battery.
- Disable Keyboard Backlight: Many modern gaming laptops feature keyboard backlighting to increase visibility, and it also looks cool. However, those backlights can cause the battery to drain a lot faster. If you’re on a trip and want to save battery, make sure to turn them off.
- Deactivate Bluetooth & WiFi: When you don’t need Bluetooth and WiFi, you can reduce energy consumption quite a bit by deactivating them.
What Kills Laptop Battery Life?
Over the lifespan of each laptop, batteries tend to lose storage capacity. However, there are also a few things that can kill battery life if done repeatedly, such as:
- Don’t fully discharge the battery
- Do not leave your laptop running 24/7
- Don’t plug the laptop 24/7. Only plug it when it needs charge
- Do not keep your laptop fully charged. The battery needs to be emptied every so often
- Avoid high battery temperatures
